New York Times: CIA Pays AT&T For Phone Call Information05:17

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This article is more than 6 years old.The entrance to the CIA New Headquarters Building (NHB) of the George Bush Center for Intelligence. (Wikimedia Commons)

Documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden show how the NSA has been gathering up information on phone call records around the world.

Today, The New York Times reports that the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans in the U.S., is doing something similar.

The newspaper reports the CIA has a contract to pay AT&T $10 million a year to search its database and provide records of phone calls connected to overseas terrorism suspects.

Government officials tell New York Times reporter Charlie Savage that AT&T masks the identities of Americans and their phone numbers if those records turn up in the CIA information sweep, but the CIA can eventually get its hands on who the Americans are by asking the FBI.